There's No Such Thing As a Girly Drink

As someone who's spent years covering the spirits and cocktail business, and worked in it for years before that, I've always recoiled whenever someone used the term "girly drink." We're all accustomed to scoffing at pointless gender binaries when it comes to other forms of marketing—pink razors and so on—but this is one expression of subconscious, outdated sexism that seems to persist largely unremarked upon. Women, as the stereotype goes, want to drink floral, sweet, and colorful cocktails out of delicately stemmed glasses. Men, on the other hand, want a belt of the stiff, strong stuff, a barrel of whiskey steeped in truck oil and football dirt. This is because women are weak and men are tough, I guess? Alcohol marketing, whether it's for "low calorie" skinny cocktails and sleek, sexy vodkas or flinty, old, mustachioed scotch tends to bear out this divide.

As more and more women gravitate toward whiskey, and the breadth of options available for increasingly educated drinkers grows, this way of thinking has begun to decline somewhat, but many of us are looking at these shifts as the exception that proves the rule. Women who drink whiskey aren't just women who drink whiskey, they're women who are consciously choosing to not drink "like a girl."

As piece a while back in Pacific Standard pointed out, we tend to look favorably on women who defy the gendered drinking conventions. "Women are expected to perform femininity, but when they perform masculinity, they are admired and rewarded," Lisa Wade writes.

The reasons for that, as a similar Slate piece suggested, tend to revolve around "just one of the guys" tropes. A woman who can fix a car, or hunt, or box, for example, is considered praiseworthy by men specifically because of her defiance of feminine expectations. (It probably doesn't need to be said that this doesn't often work in the reverse.) This is in part, of course, because most men just wish they could fuck their best friend. But I don't think the idea of performative masculinity for women goes far enough in explaining why it is that we, or at least those of us who care about drinking, appreciate the woman whose boozy repertoire reaches beyond the old cosmo or vodka soda cliches. The reasons we find a woman who takes her whiskey straight, or orders outside of the stereotypically feminine cocktail vortex, attractive are complex, but they come down to a few key points:

Taste

Vodka is objectively worse than other spirits. It's essentially nothing, a tasteless, neutral alcohol that adds little to a cocktail save for a potential buzz. Whiskeys and spirits with higher bars for entry, like bitter amaros, or hot, smoky mezcals actually have something to offer in terms of flavor profile, characteristics, and story. It's completely logical to look down upon someone who considers the vast expanse of options available in any context, be it entertainment, art, food, or what have you, and says, you know what, I'll have a glass of nothing.

Openness

There's certainly something to be said for considering a woman who drinks whiskey as being "more fun", and "up for anything", but that's not just because of the typical dude-fisted innuendo it implies. All of us, both men and women alike, find someone who's willing to try new things, have new experiences, and break out of their comfort zone appealing. There's nothing very exciting about someone who refuses to give an inch in their consumption habits. A woman, or man for that matter, who orders nothing but the same thing over and over is no different than the child who refuses the nice dinner his parents have made for him and cries until he's presented with a plate of microwaved chicken nuggets.

Knowledge

Knowing that there are, in fact, other options out there is a turn on, too. What's more attractive than knowledge? Conventions aside, most people love being with someone who knows more about the world, or at least a specific avenue of the world, than he or she does. A woman who has tippled her way through the wide world of whiskeys evinces a commitment to expertise that is downright alluring. Similarly, a person who knows their way around a classic cocktail is likely someone who can talk about its origins, history, place of provenance, and so on. It's an immediate jumpstart on any potential conversation that's going to take place between two people at a bar. The person who chooses a long lost classic isn't just saying that they appreciate things of good taste, but they appreciate history and knowledge. There's not much else to be said about a cosmo besides, "Haha, it's what they had on that one show 20 years ago."

All of which is sort of a roundabout way of saying that we don't want our drinking partner to be someone who always defaults to the basic. It's a lesson that many men, stuck in their rut of macro-beer swill, and an aversion to any cocktail with more than two ingredients could learn, as well. Drinking a quality cocktail or spirit doesn't make you either "girly" or "manly", it simply makes you more interesting, and that's an alluring quality that defies gender.

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